Pioneer Sportscaster Dies

Pioneer Sportscaster Dies

CHESTER, Penn. (July 17) - Sherman "Jocko" Maxwell, the pioneering black sportscaster who chronicled Negro league baseball players before the racial barrier fell, has died. He was 100.

Maxwell died Wednesday at Chester County Hospital in suburban Philadelphia after battling pneumonia, according to his son, Bruce Maxwell.
Supporting himself with a post office job during the day, Sherman Maxwell worked at night as a sportscaster. He was a prolific writer, submitting stories to the Ledger in Newark, New Jersey, the predecessor of The Star-Ledger, on games played by the Newark Eagles.
"His life was nothing but sports," Bruce Maxwell said. "He read about sports; he listened to sports; he talked sports."
Maxwell began his broadcasting career in 1929, doing a five-minute weekly sports report on WNJR in Newark at age 22. He went on to broadcast on other stations in northern New Jersey and eventually became the announcer for Sunday afternoon Newark Eagles games. His broadcasting career ended in 1967.
Maxwell also founded and managed the Newark Starlings, a semipro, mixed-race team.
His love of baseball was so strong that he intentionally failed exams as a high school senior so that he could play another season, said his sister, Bernice Maxwell Cross.
"Our parents bought him a new suit because he should be graduating," she said. "They had a fit."
Cross said radio stations never paid her brother. He was instead motivated by his love of the games he got to see.
"If you weren't talking about sports, he didn't know what to talk about," she said.
Maxwell, a 1994 inductee into the Newark Athletic Hall of Fame, was preceded in death by his wife, Mamie, and a daughter, Lisa.
A viewing is scheduled for Saturday.